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Last year’s Esther Honens Laureate Pavel Kolesnikov arrived in Banff Saturday night for a much in-demand performance. People attempting to get in to hear this all-Beethoven concert found it had been sold right out for the past two weeks. With tickets in high demand at Rolston Hall, the mood was stoked to hear a young Kolesnikov play Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1, alongside the Banff Festival Orchestra who were slated to perform both of the great composer’s two smallest symphonies, No. 1 in C major, and in the second half, No. 8 in F.

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The renowned British tenor Adrian Thompson came to Banff to sing the only work on Wednesday night’s program at Rolston Hall, the Five Canticles of Benjamin Britten, and I would like to think not one of us left disappointed.

Fogerty considers 1969 a pretty good year, an "extraordinary" one, in fact. So much so that he's heading across North America to celebrate it with a few thousand of his friends in hockey barns such as the Saddledome on Monday night.

Adam Rifkin was there when Giuseppe Andrews was born again as a guerrilla filmmaker. In fact, he takes credit for it. The director had cast the young actor in the lead role of a KISS-crazed teenager in his comedy Detroit Rock City. As an actor, Andrews had a “unique quality about him like a character from another era.” As a […]

The final scenes of Gruff Rhys’s documentary, American Interior, are of a joyful New Orleans-styled funeral march in the mountains near Waunfawr in Wales. Shot in beautiful black and white, the scene shows a guitar-slinging Rhys in an elaborate Davy Crockett-styled wolf-themed head covering, followed by a brass band and child singers. They are carrying a puppet — […]

It’s late in Tyler Measom and Justin Weinstein’s intriguing documentary, An Honest Liar, when the filmmakers “spin the tables” on the audience to make a point about deception. It’s so subtle, that many viewers may miss it altogether. At one point, interviews with the film’s subject — magician and famous debunker James (The Amazing) Randi […]

Theatre critics have (rightly or wrongly) been accused of sticking knives where the knifee can’t possibly defend themselves, so who’s to begrudge a playwright for turning the tables on the sharp edge of the blade for once? That’s the scenario behind playwright Ken Ludwig’s The Game’s Afoot, Vertigo’s holiday offering that’s played just as often […]

It was early on in Sarah McLachlan’s first set at the Jubilee Auditorium on Monday night when she told a cute story about her two children calling her out about her fashion choices. It had to do with the 46-year-old rocking some high-top Converse sneakers when picking up the kids from school, only to be told she was “too old” for them and that she wasn’t a rock star.

At some point, Spuds MacKenzie napped, right? There had to be a day — the seventh? — when the party pooch rested, untapped the kegger and curled up with a horse hoof or Kong or rope toy for a quiet-ish night at home. Right?

The legendary Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp is coming to Calgary and will feature rock legend Gene Simmons of KISS fame, the Herald has learned. The camp, which has been making dreams come true in the United States for the past 18 years, will hold its first foray into Canada January 8-11, 2015 in Calgary.

Rare is the opportunity to see a generational artist. One that has changed the course of history, influenced and launched thousands of others to make the world a better place. Calgary was given that opportunity Sunday night.

Late last November, Steve Patterson found himself in the middle of a perfect storm of Canadian culture. The host of the popular CBC Radio comedy show The Debaters was in Regina, during Grey Cup week, where he was doing some standup.

Philanthropy is a long, complicated word to describe something indigenous people have been doing for centuries. For Casey Eagle Speaker, one of the speakers at The Walrus Talks Philanthropy, the latest instalment of which rolls into Theatre Junction Tuesday at 7 p.m., the operative term is gifting.

Sergie Tumas was a young dancer — he grew up in Los Angeles, where his ballerina mother and actor father relocated from Russia when he was 10 — when his career took off. Tumas soon found himself in Argentina, where he discovered a passion for tango music.

There was something decidedly last night, fittingly final night about country artist Reba McEntire’s Sunday evening Saddledome show that wrapped up the Virgin Mobile Stampede Concert Series. Like, say, the Calgary Folk Music Festival and its traditionally more subdued closing headliner, Reba offered the opportunity for a wind-down. The sloppy partying had been all but done, led throughout the week — aptly or less successfully, depending on your point of view — by other acts such as Shania Twain, Paul Brandt and Keith Urban, and now was the time, the artist, the evening to bring things to a close on a still upbeat but, shall we say, more mature and refined level. Kinda classy, even.

When asked to compare Calgary’s Wild West to the American south, Hell on Wheels star Anson Mount came up with a few colourful similarities. “We both listen to country music ... We both like guns and horses.”

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